


Sanctuary

by ruric



Category: Angel: the Series, Firefly
Genre: Community: maleslashminis, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-11
Updated: 2008-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-13 16:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruric/pseuds/ruric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Simon round at <a href="http://www.maleslashminis.livejournal.com>maleslashminis</a>%20for%20Meltha%20<a%20href=">bookishwench</a> who wanted Simon/Angel, a clock, someone laughing, Angel's tattoo mentioned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanctuary

They’ve been coming here to this house on the hill for years now. 

It’s a long way past the back of beyond, even for the isolated worlds that make up the Outer Rim – but it’s always been easy to hide here. Well away from regular Alliance patrols, if they’d been in this sector of space it had never been difficult for them to sneak in and lie low for a few days or a week – take the time they needed to lick their wounds and muster their resources before heading on out. 

They hadn’t come here often and when they had they were usually running hard from something.

The front of the house stands on a small hill, looking out over the expanse of the valley and the good, rich pasture land, and you can see company approaching for miles. Behind the house are the guest quarters and bunk house, and the barns and corrals nestle in a hollow, beyond those are the gardens. Formal planting and the fenced in kitchen garden give way to scrub woodland leading to the foothills and the deep gully where, under Wash’s instruction all those years ago, they’d rigged a fairly simple but extensive arrangement of camouflage. The gully is big enough to hide Serenity and only a couple of miles from the house, and whenever they come here there are always horses or a rig waiting to make the journey back so much easier on a tired crew.

Foothills grow rapidly taller leading to the mountain range which seems to almost enclose the house in its embrace, and those mountains give more protection than they’ve ever needed. Three days ride from town, the danger of anyone noticing them around has always been slim and the man who lives here and his hired hands have been nothing if not discreet. 

They aren’t running now nor are they mustering resources. 

Mal has retreated into a stony silence, the warmth that heated his eyes has dimmed and turned to icy rage. The whipcord tenseness of his body belays the silence, and more than once Simon has heard the sound of china shattering, of a fist connecting with wood. Inara follows him as closely as his shadow, always a few steps behind, her once graceful movements gone jerky and fragile. When his shoulders slump she leans in close, a hand placed carefully in the center of his back, words whispered soft and low into his ear.

Jayne spends his time with the hired hands. 

This manifests in sessions of target practice with guns and knives, and Simon has had more than one occasion to stomp away, furious at Jayne’s obliviousness. He never seems to notice how they all flinch with each shot discharged or at the solid thunk of metal into wood – all of them but River. She is entranced with Jayne’s collection of weapons, and she follows him as closely as Inara follows Mal. Quiet and watchful, she sometimes reaches to snatch a gun up before Jayne can get to it, to load, cock and fire, always hitting the target dead center before dropping a curtsey and handing it back with a small secret smile.

Simon doesn’t know what Zoe and Kaylee do. 

He’s barely seen them this last week – sometimes he hears horses leaving early in the morning just as the sun is rising, and they don’t come back until well after sunset. Other times he hears the sound of crying from Zoe’s room, overlain with the soft sounds of Kaylee’s voice muttering nonsense words and he’s leaned against that door many time, his forehead resting against smooth planed wood, wanting to go in but he has no idea of what he could say to either of them. 

Simon’s never handled death well.

His job was to heal, to save and he’d been brilliant at it. But when he lost a patient, when fate or fortune tore one from his grasp he’d never really known what to say, how to offer comfort. 

He could mouth some pretty and appropriate words easily enough, he knew how to say the ‘right’ things, but none of it ever helped the people around him. It didn’t back then and it won’t help now. The crew have all been damaged by the loss of Book and Wash and there’s nothing under this sky or any other that he can do to fix that. The remains of the only man who might’ve been able to offer them all words of comfort lie high up in those hills.

Today he’d had to get away from the house and the aura of pain that seemed to have settled around it. 

He’d ridden up into the hills, to the plateau where the graveyard, if it could be called that, nestled on the canyon’s edge. The small memorials to Wash and Book had been placed out towards the edge of the plateau, and he’d like to think if there was anything beyond the finality of death that they’d both be happy with this place. 

A view across the canyon to the wide horizon and beyond; it should be enough to satisfy Wash’s need to see open sky and Book’s pleasure in exploration. He’d spent an hour there, whilst the sun rose to its zenith, trying to find the words to say goodbye to men who’d become his friends – but in the end there were no words, just memories of shared experiences and the times they’d had. He lacks Book’s faith and the universe has never given him a sign to show that there might be something beyond what he can see and feel.

By the time he finally rides around the back of the barn, he’s tired and grubby, the pristine white shirt he’d donned this morning turned almost the color of rust by the layer of dust it has attracted. Cotton clings wetly to his skin between his shoulders, in the small of his back and under his arms. His throat is dry, his eyes sore and his scalp itches, but he knows better than to see to his own comforts first.

Everything is quieter than usual as he dismounts and leads the horse into the barn. There’s no sign of anyone else, so he removes saddle and bridle, rubs the horse down, because although Jayne would laugh and Mal would, in better times, have teased him about getting his lily white hands dirty, he knows how to look after a horse.

He settles the horse and cleans the tack, partly to do something that will keep him away from the house for a little while longer, but also because he cares about his own instruments so why would he not care about cleaning these? And there’s grease on his hands and a slight smile twisting his lips when he realises he’s constructing refutations to a convoluted argument with Jayne in his head just for something to keep his mind occupied.

The soft clip of hooves over packed earth stills his hands and brings his head up and he finds himself look straight at bare skin. 

A taut belly above jeans and a leather belt and he feels the flush heating his cheeks as he keeps on going, because to stop now would be just too embarrassing. Waist flaring out to the broadness of chest, the hollow at the base of a strong neck, a well shaped chin, and past lips that are curving into a small smile even as he looks into the deep brown eyes of the man who has given them sanctuary so often before.

“Breaking horses is hard work, I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you.”

Simon’s tongue is glued to the roof of his mouth, because it cannot be right that all he wants to do is place his hands on tanned skin, to feel muscles shift and move. And for a moment he’s dizzy with hunger and need, until he can tear his eyes away, to look down where his fingers have closed tight on the saddle, nails digging into leather.

“Angel.” 

He swallows hard and if he believed in prayer he’d ask God to make Angel not see, not answer the look that he knows was painted so clearly on his face.

Angel steps into the tack room, settling a clean halter back into its place and Simon is conscious of every move he makes, but he keeps his eyes on the saddle, forces his hands to unclench and smooth the polish into the leather, and his fingers aren’t really shaking with each stoke.

“Simon.”

The sound of his name breaks his concentration, pulls his gaze from the saddle to Angel’s face, and his hands stutter to a halt. He flinches reflexively when cool fingers close around his wrist, and the saddle is pulled from his grasp to be returned to its rightful place in the room.

“Come up to the house, you look like you need a drink.”

The hammering of his heart is loud in his chest and he doesn’t recall moving or standing, doesn’t know what makes him move his feet to follow – only knows that he couldn’t stop this now any more than he could stop what happened to Wash.

Boots kick up dust as he follows Angel from the barn to the house, and all he sees is Angel’s broad back and the intricate ink decorating one shoulder. 

He’d seen drawings from old books, supposedly from Earth That Was, back in his father’s library, had spent hours with River, their heads close together as they’d poured over the stories, of myth and legend. He knows what a griffin looks like, but he’s never seen one impressed upon flesh before, and his eyes are trying to make sense of the overlapping spirals and curls of ink. He only realises they’ve reached the house when his boots thump down onto wood rather than dirt, and the beating heat of the sun is replaced by the coolness of the interior of the house, his boots scuffing softly over a thick carpet as he’s led into a study.

The study takes his breath away, makes his belly clench with a wave of homesickness and loss. 

On either side of the fireplace is a huge glass fronted bookcase crammed from floor to ceiling with books of all shapes and sizes, and his fingers itch to touch, to feel paper under his hands and read. And for just a moment he’s not _here_ but he’s back _there_. Back in his father’s house when life was simple, when River was _still_ River, before she went away, back to a time when he had hope – and he sees that room not this. Shelves of textbooks and encyclopedias, their rich leather bindings and gold leafed lettering glistening in the firelight on a winter evening, River’s head bent over her work and even then she was years ahead of him. His bright, brilliant little sister.

The coolness of glass pressed into his hand and the smell of whiskey catches at the back of his throat and shatters his trance, bringing him back. He uses the steady tick-toc of the clock on the mantelpiece to try to get his ragged breathing under control. Blinking hard, he takes a long swallow of whiskey to ease the ache in his throat, letting its acid bite roll down into his belly even as he turns his back, one hand waving towards the shelves he’s trying to ignore.

“Nice collection.”

“I’ve been putting it together for....a while.”

Simon’s out of his depth, made claustrophobic by the things he’s trying to ignore. The books are a reminder of a life he’ll never have again, a life he’s not so sure he’d want anymore. The closeness of the half naked man next to him brings a bitter taste to his mouth at the thought of what he could have, if only he knew the right words.

He can’t look at the books, not yet, nor at Angel so his gaze finds the one remaining wall covered in pictures and half-finished sketches. Pencil sketches that barely give an impression, drawings in pen and ink, watercolor canvases and oil paintings. He can’t help but move closer to see more detail. A young girl, a tumble of honey blonde hair falling over her shoulders; two darker haired girls, one with a body made for sin and dark shadowed eyes; a tall man with short hair pouring over a table of books; a black man dressed in loose clothes and holding what looks like an axe and then dressed in a suit; another man playing a guitar, his head tipped forward to almost hide his face, and next to it the same man, wearing a suit and looking angry.

“Who are they?”

Compelled to ask regardless of how rude he might seem, not caring that he’s transgressing his own boundaries of good manners.

“People I once knew.”

Angel’s voice is soft and filled with regret, and Simon watches as he reaches out, fingers touching gently the frame of one picture, brushing carefully across the face of the blonde girl caught forever under glass. 

“They were lovers, colleagues, friends.”

The same faces and figures are frequently repeated, looking a little older and a little more tired, and there are other faces, too. 

A delicate looking dark haired girl, a teenaged boy, a beautiful, fragile looking woman and the guitar playing man again, this time with no shirt, his body covered in symbols. This time when Simon feels the blush heat his cheeks he doesn’t look away, but turns from the picture of the body sprawled across a rumpled bed to look into Angel’s face and search his eyes.

“And him? Was he a lover or a friend?”

Angel’s laugh is soft, his lips twisting into a bitter attempt at a smile and Simon wants to reach out and soothe away that pain.

“Both...neither. Probably even an enemy. I’m not sure it really matters anymore.”

Simon swallows the last of his whiskey, sets his glass down carefully feeling the liquor it curl warm fingers into his belly, and his muscles relax.

“Does it ever get any easier?”

“What?”

“Losing people. Losing the people who’re important.”

“No...it doesn’t.” The words are almost whispered as Angel leans in close, his breath stirring against Simon’s mouth. “It never gets any easier, but I can make you forget how much it hurts just for a little while.” 

Simon’s fingers close on skin he’s been aching to touch, and he feels muscles shift beneath his hands. 

Angel's mouth is warm; his kiss, flavoured by whiskey is as hungry as Simon’s own, and if a little while is all they can have? 

Then it will be good enough for now.


End file.
